had been aware
of his contact.

Shann fought to find that thread of awareness again. Patiently he once
more created his vision of Thorvald, adding every detail he could
recall, small things about the other which he had not known that he had
noticed--the tiny arrow-shaped scar near the base of the officer's
throat, the way his growing hair curled at the ends, the look of one
eyebrow slanting abruptly toward his hairline when he was dubious about
something. Shann strove to make a figure as vividly as Logally and Trav
had been in the mist of the illusion.

"... where?"

This time Shann was prepared; he did not let that mind image dissolve in
his excitement at recapturing the link. "Throg ship," he said the words
aloud, over and over, but still he held to his picture of Thorvald.

"... will...."

Only that one word! The thread between them snapped again. Only then did
Shann become conscious of a change in the ship's vibration. Were they
setting down? And where? Let it be at the camp! It must be the camp!

There was no jar at that landing, just that one second the vibration
told him the ship was alive and air-borne, and the next a dead quiet
testified that they had landed. Shann, his sore body stiff with tension,
waited for the next move on the part of his captors.

He continued to lie in the dark, still queasy from the stench of the
cell, too keyed up to try to reach Thorvald. There was a dull grating
over his head, and he looked up eagerly--to be blinded by a strong beam
of light. Claws hooked painfully under his arms and he was manhandled up
and out, dragged along a short passage and pitched free of the ship,
falling hard upon trodden earth and rolling over gasping as the seared
skin of his body was rasped and abraded.

The Terran lay face up now, and as his eyes adjusted to the light, he
saw a ring of Throg heads blotting out the sky as they inspected their
catch impassively. The mouth mandibles of one moved with a faint
clicking. Again claws fastened in his armpits, brought Shann to his
feet, holding him erect.

Then the Throg who had given that order moved closer. His hand-claws
clasped a small metal plate surmounted by a hoop of thin wire over which
was stretched a web of threads glistening in the sun. Holding that hoop
on a level with his mouth, the alien clicked his mandibles, and those
sounds became barely distinguishable basic galactic words.

"You Throg meat!"

For a moment Shann wondered if the al